YOUR DNA WORKSHOP

MADDY WRITES:

Dear Karen,

I wonder if my mother-in-law’s ‘Jo’ DNA problem would make an interesting case for one of your DNA articles?

Jo was raised by her foster mother. She met her birth mother and two brothers, and her birth mother always said that Jo and one of her brothers ‘Bob’ shared the same father and had Norwegian genes. I got them both tested on FamilyTreeDNA several years ago and the results showed that they did not share the same father. We continued the DNA search, tested Jo on Ancestry and added her DNA to a few more databases.

At some point we got in touch with her closet living match who was living in America and was delighted to hear from us as Jo was also his closest living relative. Unfortunately, he was also adopted and knew nothing about either of his birth parents. This whole process has been a bit of a rollercoaster for my mother-in-law. I would dearly love to be able to give her a name for